Right now, the rightwing spin machine is both trying to portray Clinton as some kind of raving madman and a liar. Quite frankly, after the number of lies they’ve told about him, I’m surprised he hasn’t decked anyone yet. The lunacy charge is of course an attempt to deflect opinion from the substance of what Clinton said. As for Rice’s weaselly rebuttal, see this article on Media Matters: AP, CNN uncritically reported Rice’s misleading response to Clinton interview

I’d also like to point out once again Keith Olbermann’s COUNTDOWN, the only mainstream media venue that is not jumping on the Party line and trying to give credit and blame where it is due. Clinton wasn’t blameless, but he recognized the threat of Al-Qaeda during his administration and tried to deal with it. The Republican dogpack accused him at the time of trying to deflect attention from that most important of all issues, whether or not he got a blowjob from an intern. The American people at the time, to their credit, responded, who gives a f***? Nonetheless, Clinton wasn’t able to do much about the extremist threat and attempted the handoff to the new administration and got rebuffed…they had more important issues like tax cuts and stem cell lines and missile defense systems to protect us from the now non-existent threat of the Soviet Union. Despite Condi Rice’s claim that they were not presented a plan, they were given an assessment of the dangers of extremist terrorism and a list of actions needed to address those dangers. If that ain’t a plan, I don’t know what is. Olbermann is covering each of these points in detail this week and furthermore has an interview with Bill Clinton that took place right after the Chris Wallace one, so check out the Countdown site for all this…